Travel Adapter Checker

In short These are two different questions and almost every "travel adapter" answers only one of them. An adapter changes the SHAPE of the plug so it enters a foreign socket, and passes the local electricity through untouched. A converter changes the VOLTAGE. If you take a 120 V-only appliance from the United States to a 230 V country and fit an adapter, you have used a device whose entire purpose was to make a connection that destroys your appliance — often instantly, occasionally on fire. The good news is that most modern electronics no longer care: look for "INPUT: 100–240V ~50/60Hz" in small type on the plug or power brick, and if it says that, the device handles the whole world and needs nothing but a shape adapter. Phone chargers, laptop supplies and camera chargers essentially all say it. Things that make heat — hairdryers, travel kettles, irons, straighteners — usually do not, and those are the ones people destroy. The trap worth knowing about separately is a plug that fits when it should not: eight countries here, including the Philippines, Peru, China, Thailand and Vietnam, run 220 V or more through sockets that accept flat American pins. Nothing physically stops you, and the fit removes the moment where you would have stopped to check. Frequency, the 50 Hz against 60 Hz difference, matters far less than people expect: anything with a switch-mode power supply ignores it entirely, and it only really affects mains-synchronous motors and old mechanical clocks.